Written in the Stars
by HerFairy
Summary: Emma Swan wasn't an expert on love – mainly because she didn't believe in it and no soulmate was going to change her mind.


**Written in the Stars**

…

Emma Swan wasn't an expert on love – mainly because she didn't believe in it and no soulmate was going to change her mind. (For cocoa-and-rum )

…

On a list of ways to meet her soulmate, she didn't even consider choking on an onion ring to be an option. It was, she thought, unlikely that her favorite food would attempt to murder her on an occasion that was meant to be written by the stars and she had promptly discarded her solution for such a dilemma. Which meant when that day came and he walked in those doors, all charming grins and flirtatious winking, she could do nothing except continue coughing up a lung as she tried to extract a piece of food from her throat.

Emma Swan was the most unluckiest person in Storybrooke. She would make sure someone put that in the paper to slander her with rather than the world's worst detective, at least then it would be true. She only considered this late though because – at the time – she was stilling coughing, her head ducked down as she wheezed and a coworker slapped her back three times in quick succession. By the time she could breathe, several moments had passed and the new recruit held a glass of water out to her. She noticed absently that his fingers were long and graceful as she accepted it, raising her eyes to his.

She missed her mouth, dumping some of the water down her chin. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have consulted her list (because spilling water on herself was on it), but she could barely remember her own name. Ten seconds in the man's presence had turned her into a swooning idiot, but Emma couldn't think of anything to say, her mouth opening and closing, the words lost among the headache inducing rush of color.

"You're…" His hoarse voice trailed off and he cleared his throat as though he were the one who had choked. When he spoke again, it was with an accident, though she could only tell because his words tripped out of him like a broken dam. "My brother likened himself to a seer after guessing the day he would meet his soulmate and loathe as I am to give him more reason to be an arrogant arse, I do think I owe him a drink or two now. I don't think I'll tell him why."

She blinked. "Your brother?"

"Aye." He stared at her – their – coworker for a moment till the person vacated the seat across from Emma's desk and then sank into himself. The movement was too graceful for someone who had just watched her choke on an onion ring and then spill water on herself. Speaking of which… She grabbed a tissue, grimacing as she cleaned her chin and the top of her shirt, using the moment to collect herself.

Fate was only allowed to make a fool of her twice, she wouldn't let it have a third victory. Her movements halted and she stared in bewilderment at her top. This morning, it had been a lovely shade of grey to go along with her dark pants – to her eyes, her wardrobe was in various shades of black, grey, and white which had nearly sent her friend Mary Margaret into fits of laughter when she first saw it. She hadn't understood at the time, but…

It was an awful shade of yellow.

Oh. This was yellow. She didn't know how she knew, she had never seen yellow before in her life, but somehow, just looking at it, she knew.

David and Mary Margaret had telepathy. Ruby and her wife, Dorothy, had the other's nickname on their wrist. Abigail and Frederick could share each other's pain. Emma and—She didn't even know his name. Emma and her soulmate could see colors. It was anticlimactic, now that she thought about it, but she didn't know what else she had expected. There weren't a lot of soulmate stories out there – she only knew so many because of David and Mary Margaret's hunt for people like them.

"Aren't soulmates supposed to be rare?" Emma asked after a moment of silence. Her racing thoughts had taken no more than a few seconds, just long enough for his eyes to light with the beginning of curiosity.

"Truth be told, I've only met one other couple aside from my brother and his wife," he replied, his eyes roaming over her face. Unlike her, he handled the sudden arrival of colors with quiet curiosity, flickering over her features and the room with varying degrees of interest. He lingered often on her eyes, which left Emma in the odd situation of staring into the first shade of blue she had ever seen before – it was only fitting, then, that it was his eyes.

She hadn't paid attention to his features. The onslaught was too much – too many colors and too many names as her brain caught up with the past twenty-nine years of missing colors, plopping the various shades across her vision like the world were a coloring book. A headache bloomed between her eyebrows and she grimaced, looking away from his blue eyes, but knowing that looking away hadn't successfully rid her of the knowledge.

His purposely mussed hair was dark, just a hint of ginger in it to go along with the flashes of it in his groomed scruff. His eyes were blue – too blue, really, to be real, but she knew without knowing how that they were quite real – but more importantly, they were honest. Even without the color to help her, she could always read people by their eyes and his were no exception. It was the eyes that sold her -though the flash of tanned skin, muscular flesh, and beautiful lips helped him along quite a bit.

She realized, quite suddenly, that she was unreasonably angry.

Emma Swan wasn't an expert on love – mainly because she didn't believe in it and no soulmate was going to change her mind. Screw fate, who had handed her a fair amount of trouble over the years and thus couldn't be trusted with the task of delivering her a soulmate that wouldn't make a muck of her carefully repaired life.

She could feel the weight of his eyes on her once more, but she kept her gaze averted, staring at the walls of her office. She could see why people had suggested repainting, it was uglier than the color of her shirt – and that was saying something.

Taking her anger out on inanimate objects seemed smarter than ripping the rookies head off.

"I believe I will take my leave for now," he said. Only then did she look at him again and the sad understanding on his face was far more infuriating than the idea of fate.

"You do that," she said coldly, watching him leave the room and approach the deputy's desk for his assignment. It was lucky that Deputy Mulan had needed more hours for the week otherwise Emma would have had no choice but to help him settle in for his stay with the department.

(Later, Mary Margaret would tell her it was fate).

…

In no time at all, Emma foiled fate. Only twenty-four hours after sending her soulmate packing, the colors faded from sight between one blink and the next as though some deity was retracting the gift. Not happily either, if the wicked headache she sustained for the few days after that meant anything.

Nobody batted an eye when she missed work a few days afterwards to recover. Mulan said nothing of what she witnessed either so there were no heart-warming pep talks from the cavalry and Killian Jones made no effort to reach out to her either. Like her, he must have realized the idiocy of it all or maybe he didn't want to put forth the effort. Either way, he didn't reach out to her and she didn't reach out to him – and she was content with this knowledge, if not a little disoriented from her own seesawing emotions.

So, really, there was no reason for her to work overnight the next few weeks. Before they even added Killian to the Storybrooke Police Department, the other four employees usually just rerouted the phone to whichever unfortunate sap happened to be on duty for the night. As the sheriff, Emma had first-pick of when to do it and – if she so pleased – could choose not to do it all. She never did, simply because she didn't have much of a life in the first place and enjoyed the few hours of purpose that work gave her.

Nobody thought anything of her taking over the nightshifts several times. They did – however – start to look when she didn't show up for work in the mornings anymore and it was only the sight of her paperwork, neatly organized on her desk alongside any pertinent information for them to know showed that she was alive. Emma knew that it wasn't a long-lasting situation. Not only did Storybrooke have a singularly low amount of crime in the evenings to keep her busy, she would rather face Killian Jones than deal with further calls from the public for her to step down.

Emma Swan had fought tooth and nail to become sheriff of Storybrooke, regardless of the mistakes of her youth like prison and Neal freaking Cassidy, and she wouldn't let fate screw it up.

It was for that reason only that one month after meeting her soulmate, Emma returned to work. It was a coincidence, really, that the day she picked also happened to be the day that Killian worked as well. The sight of him when she walked in the office was almost enough to send her straight back out the door again. A spike of pain hit her forehead and she held the threshold for a moment, wondering if that would be an excuse enough.

It wouldn't, sadly. She forced a semblance of professionalism onto her face, ignored the pain that made her teeth clench, and entered the building.

Killian's head lifted at her arrival. His eyes were no longer that blue, but an interesting shade of dark grey, a pale imitation of the color they really were. His lips lifted in a smile, but he did no more than that. Relieved that she avoided a confrontation, Emma retreated into her office.

…

Though she had spent a lot of time in her office the past few nights, she had underestimated the amount of work she accomplished in the dark. At night, she spent most of her time trying to stay awake, the hum of the lights her only companion. But the department teemed with activity during the day, even during the quiet hours in which the residents of Storybrooke deemed it appropriate to give them a break.

She had missed the noise, truthfully. Someone had even taken the time to update the low-sounding music that played over the speakers, switching it from the country of her predecessor to something that Emma didn't recognize. It was a nice change, if not a bit unexpected for everyone in the office, who had tried and failed to figure out how to make the damn thing play anything else.

This told her who accomplished it.

She tried not to enjoy the music too much to prove a point. Even if some of the songs were her favorites.

…

They were at a stalemate. It was lunchtime and she figured he had been at the office long enough to know the routine. Rookies always picked up lunch from Granny's till their three-month mark, in which case it returned to the usual rotation. It wouldn't be too big of a deal to pretend she wasn't hungry – her stomach growled in protest at the thought – if she didn't see hear the roar of David's truck. She needn't give him a reason to fret over her as he so often did.

But she also didn't want to say anything to Killian. She was being childish now, she knew it. They were coworkers – worse, she was his boss and eventually she would have to talk with him. She wasn't an idiot, she couldn't put it off forever, but the idea of putting it off for a while longer was too nice to resist.

So lost in her thoughts, she didn't even hear the knock on her door or the creak as it opened.

A to-go bag dropped on her desk, skillfully avoiding the report for Leroy's drunken brawl that she had been trying to write. Killian waited for her to speak, but she only stared at the bag, careful to avoid looking at him. If she saw him, would it retie the threads of fate that she had broken?

"Your order, Swan. I suspect Granny doubled your order of onion rings if the heft in this bag means anything." She liked his voice, she decided, the lilt of his words and the accent of each made her feel comfortable. It was the type of voice that should have read books for a living rather than toiled away in a police department. "She sends her regards and then threatened to withhold further cheeseburgers without proof of life."

Against her will, Emma grinned. "That sounds liker her," she said quietly, more to herself than to him.

"I recall her language from my youth and find myself surprised that she changed it. Not the tone – a jab stays such even if the words are sugar-coated," he said fondly, an old memory in his voice that drew her eyes.

Emma frowned. She had only lived in Storybrooke for two years, but she hadn't ever known Granny to be anything less than polite when she told you off. The idea of her swearing made Emma want to laugh, something she swallowed back with great effort. Unwittingly, she asked, "You lived here before?"

"Aye, my brother and I grew up here till we decided the city would be better for us both." The truth, but not quite. There was more to the story, but Emma wasn't willing to delve any deeper into him than the parts she had already touched.

"I see."

"Aye." He rocked on his feet, an unusual move for someone who had been confident up until that moment, but the dilemma on his mind ended. She didn't know which side won. "Enjoy your food, lass, I'll be eating and heading off."

"Thank you," she said, nodding her head.

They locked eyes as he closed the door. Her breath froze in her lungs, waiting for the colors to return, but all he did was smile sadly before the door stood between them. She let out a shaky breath.

She wondered if maybe she wasn't angry so much as scared.

…

The next time they were working together, Emma tried to avoid contact with him beyond the necessary. She was sure that the colors would stay away still if she kept the conversations surface deep, so she dropped some of the cold indifference. It was much easier to do it that way, but she tried not to look too closely at the reasons why.

He didn't comment about her sudden switch and continued to switch between charming and equally polite.

…

Despite their strange relationship, Killian and Emma were a great duo in the field and off the field. They worked in tangent with the other, neither impeded the other's way, but one was always there to cover the other.

It helped that they – unlike the other workers – were the outsiders, the unbiased. Emma, who had only lived in Storybrooke for two years, and Killian, who hadn't lived in Storybrooke in close to twenty years, were the only people who didn't have the manacles of the town and its citizens to hold them back. Where Ruby saw old high school friends, Emma saw the thieves. Where Mulan saw dishonor, Killian saw accident.

Where Emma was there with suspicion, Killian was there with belief.

They worked well together. She didn't know him that well still, refusing to speak with him about things that could step into the territory of personal, but she trusted him.

…

As summer broke over Storybrooke though, it brought a rise of temperature and a rise of tempers throughout the town. The department was full force for once, something that made Emma grimace as she imagined the amount of extra paperwork she would have to organize if Ruby and Mulan came to blows over their past, the very thought of which made her head hurt all the more. She separated them at the first opportunity, unwilling to referee between old lovers.

Which explained how she was crammed into little yellow bug with Killian as her partner.

He made a face as she drove, though she couldn't decipher what it meant. Did something smell bad in her car? Unlikely, considering she cleaned it the day before. Did she smell bad? A casual sniff of her hair told her no. As though sensing her confusion, he said, "This is the first time we've been on a mission together, lass. Shall we come up with secret code names? I'll be the dashing pirate, of course."

She shot him a look that was neither annoyed nor amused but some middle-ground between the two. She didn't give him time to figure it out, returning her eyes to the road in time to make the next stop sign. The library wasn't all that far from the police station, it was only four minutes as the crow flies, but the routine involved multiple right-turn only streets, stop signs, and one lone street light that chose today to stay on red for an unnecessarily long amount of time.

He held his hands up in surrender, but he didn't look all that worried about her wrath. Perhaps he accepted the title of Source of Her Annoyance, something he had earned since their first meeting through no fault of his own. Way to go, fate. "Well, if you want to be a pirate too then you won't hear arguments from me. You just can't be dashing, I only know so many adjectives and the bloated pirate isn't nearly as attractive."

She laughed. His sense of humor was one of the things that made his title droop.

"There it is," he said quietly, so low that she almost missed it.

"Eh?"

"I said, where is it? The library," he clarified at her blank look. She didn't call him out on the lie, her fingers tightening on the wheel. This wasn't a romance novel, he hadn't been trying to make her laugh.

"It's not much farther. See the tower up there?" She lifted her chin to point at it, wondering how he could have avoided it in the four months he had worked at the station. Then, because she thought this might be surface enough conversation for her to use, she questioned him, a grin playing on her lips. "You've lived here how long and you haven't looked at the library once? What, are you the type of pirate who can't read?"

"I can read just as well as you, Swan," he countered, mock-glowering at her. She thought he would stop there and answer the second part, but he surprised her by continuing as though he had more to say. "If I were a pirate, I'd be the captain and I would be a right idiotic one if I couldn't read. How else would I navigate the stars and read maps?"

Because she knew a defense mechanism when she saw one and because she had no wish to prod any further, she didn't comment on his avoidance of her question. She bit her lip for a moment, swallowing back the curiosity. To ask more, she would be stepping past the surface. It was easy to do that when she talked to him. "Do you need to read to do those?"

"I'm sure they make it easier," he admitted.

They lapsed into silence that didn't stretch into awkward as they arrived at the library. Like the call from Belle French had told them, the door stood ajar where a patch of sunlight showed off the green-white tiled floor that winked in the light. "You cover right, I cover left?" Emma asked lightly, parking her bug along the curb. He nodded.

She pinned her badge to the front of her jacket where it was in sight and grabbed her gun; both were a comfort and a heavy responsibility. They approached the door cautiously and Emma positioned herself outside it, gesturing for him to open it further. With swiftness that came from practice, the duo burst into the library, her looking left and him looking right, searching for the vandalizing foe and covering the other's back.

The caution was wasted on the culprit, a man singing off-key in a drunken slur, who amused himself by balancing books on his head with little success. She sighed, putting her gun back in its holster as the man – Will Scarlet, she realized – spun around to face them at their entrance, his words cutting off and the book falling off his head with a thump.

"Will Scarlet, you're under arrest for…" Emma trailed off as she caught a good look at him. With his short hair and large ears, he always looked rather strange, but even she hadn't ever seen him wearing a kilt. Not that it was goofy looking exactly, but unusual nonetheless when paired with his shoes and his top, though she couldn't say what part of it was off. Just… something that she couldn't quite see.

"None of those clothes go well together, mate," Killian said with amusement, his gun nowhere in sight now that the possible threat was gone. Will raised his hands sheepishly, his easy acceptance coming from the way he swayed as though the tile under his feet were waves.

"You're under arrest," she finished, blinking. Without needing him to ask, she passed over her cuffs to him, making a mental note to start the work for more of them.

Proving that they thought along the same lines, Killian eyed the cuffs. "I wasn't expecting the department to only have three sets."

"Budget cuts. The mayor wants to build a park."

He processed this slowly. "Don't we already have a park?"

"The mayor wants to build another park."

"There aren't that many children in Storybrooke, certainly not enough to need two parks. Unless said park happens to be located next to the water and possesses somewhere to barbeque," he amended thoughtfully. She wasn't sure which part called to him more, the water or the food, but she thought it might have been a bit of both.

His words brought a pang to her stomach. "I would kill for some good steak," she said with a wry smile. Storybrooke didn't possess the fine steak houses that the big city had – at least none that wouldn't cost half her paycheck. It had been a good while since she had deemed it worth the half-hour drive to the city to satisfy her craving.

"Perhaps you needn't travel so far for it, I happen to know a fantastic cook." He was flirting with her. His voice was deeper than before, sensing the hidden weight behind his words as easily as she could.

She had to change the subject. She had to stop him. She had to get out of here.

Instead, her traitorous mouth laughed and teased. "Your brother?"

His smile wasn't victorious like she expected although a glimmer of it appeared in his eyes. Perhaps that's why the sudden tightening of her chest lasted only a moment. His smile was sweet and then they twisted into a mock grimace. "You wound me."

It scared her that she knew that was too exaggerated to be real.

"I'm gonna wound ya both if ya don't take me out of here. Making me sick listenin' to this banter, just go flirt at home if ya want to so badly," Will slurred, his face slightly more discolored than usual. The unfortunate part of not seeing colors was not being able to decipher what that could mean – was he pale from the guilt of his crimes? Unlikely. Was he red from the alcohol? Possibly. Was he about to be sick? The most likely.

Killian sighed lowly.

It was just the bucket of water she needed to snap out of it, though a flush rose on her face that made her feel oddly like a schoolgirl rather than an adult of twenty-nine.

…

Their next few months of working together were uneventful. The heatwave broke and the amount of work for the department slowed back to normal small-town standards. What wasn't normal? The way the ice broke around Killian and Emma. Not enough for them to confront the thing that lay between them – and soulmate was quite a big thing to handle – but enough that they could be friends.

If – sometimes – he looked at her in a way a friend couldn't then that was just an accident. If – sometimes – he stared at her hair, as though mesmerized by a color that she couldn't see then she pretended not to notice.

If – somehow – the colors were back for him and if – somehow - his hair looked a little more brown than black then she ignored that, too.

…

He wasn't at work the next time she saw him, but he was one of the few bystanders near the scene of a robbery. Even though he didn't live in the area, something bystanders were quick to point out in vicious whispers, it wasn't far from the docks and that was reason enough for her to scratch him off the list of potential suspects. After all, she had heard the longing in his voice when he mentioned the water.

Nonetheless, she questioned him extensively. No differently than she would any of the other potential witnesses.

The arrival of Robert Gold brought mixed reactions from the crowd. Those that had already finished speaking to her and lingered for curiosities' sake remembered some other pressing matter to handle. Those that didn't speak with her yet sunk into the backgrounds, hiding from the displeasure written across his narrow face. Gold brought the extreme out in everyone – and the extreme was often fear.

Gold scanned the crowd, the annoyance on his face fading to amusement at their reactions to him. It pleased him to see people cowering away from an old man with a limp, but she didn't doubt the power he held over people till the amusement disappeared like a candle blown out, replaced with a rage far too deep to be real. He stared at Killian's back as though he could light him on fire with just his eyes.

It was such a violent reaction for a man who usually his emotions better that Emma stared at him distrustfully. Though Killian's back was to him, he stiffened, perhaps reading in her face that Gold stood there or perhaps his instincts were sensing the threat. He turned on his heels and she wondered if it was an accident that he angled himself to stand just slightly between Gold and her.

"Your police work has increased, Miss. Swan, to have caught the suspect so quickly," Gold bit out.

"No suspects have been found yet, but we do have some leads to explore," she replied sharply, only half lying. Nobody at the scene had said anything note-worthy to her so far and she would have to check on security videos instead if the jewelry store had any. Or – she amended, watching Gold's face tighten further– if the owner would even allow her to look at it.

Gold swallowed back his anger to smile at her, but she could see the flash of teeth in his look. There was nothing pleasant or kind about it. It was the smile of a shark who smelled blood. "I would save you the trouble of investigating by telling you that this man is responsible without a doubt."

"Innocent until proven guilty," she quoted. People would think it was unwise to prod a sleeping bear, but Emma's hackles rose in Killian's defense. But Emma wasn't stupid either and she continued in a cool voice. "I'll take your concerns into account, Mr. Gold, and assure you that we'll find the thief. Please contact us if you have any information that could benefit us finding the _right culprit_."

If he missed the emphasis in her words, he was an idiot. Like her, Gold wasn't stupid and though his smile stayed in place, Emma could see the way his fingers tightened over his cane. As though it was taking all he had to not swing at her for her impetuous. Killian sucked in a breath, so quiet that she wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't standing right beside her. Gold, who stood several feet away, didn't notice and continued to stare her down.

Gold clicked his tongue. "Very well, Miss. Swan. Perhaps two investigators will make for a thorough investigation." The way his eyes flickered between them told her more than his words did and she fought the urge to stiffen. It wasn't a secret that Killian and Emma were something more. Mulan might have been the only witness that first day, but she was hardly the only person to notice Emma's extreme reaction to him in the months since.

She didn't breathe till the hum of Gold's car was gone. She wasn't the only one – of the crowd that had been gathered around her prior to his arrival, only two other people remained. She shooed them off with a promise to collect their statements – if they had one – tomorrow morning at the station and they left with some grumbling.

For once, it didn't bother her to be alone with him. Usually, she had to stop the flow of questions and comments in his presence, but for once, the words were lost before they could even form in her head.

His hands were shoved into his pockets as he feigned casualness. His words betrayed him where his body did not. "I loved his wife once, a long time ago, and My Milah… she loved me, too. He wouldn't care that she was gone if he didn't believe she was his to own. The fact that she let him go was an insult – and the crocodile doesn't take insults lightly. I've had a long time to accept that she's gone, but he never will forget that I'm the one who knew her in the end."

She nodded slowly. Gold played a part in a lot of people's unhappiness – it seemed everyone with their hearts broken by the Gold family ended up in Storybrooke. She, who had loved and been dropped by Gold's son. He, who had loved and lost Gold's first wife. For such a small town, they specialized in heartbreak.

Then she thought of David and Mary Margaret, who had found each other. She thought of Ruby and Dorothy, who had saved each other. She thought of Fred and Abigail, who completed each other. She thought of her and Killian, who trusted each other. It might have specialized in heartbreak, but she thought that it might have known the cure to that as well.

She almost missed his next words.

"Quite clearly my pockets are empty except for my hands, but you're safe to check for evidence," he said bitterly.

"I know you didn't, but I'll have to check things out anyway," she said apologetically, pushing away her sappy thoughts. "If only to say that you were cleared officially." She thought he would protest, if only because she didn't want to imagine people shuffling around in her personal life. Somehow it was worse to imagine someone poking around in her car than her apartment – perhaps because her car was more her home than the apartment ever would be.

"How do you know?"

"What?"

"How do you know I didn't? I would pick myself as a prime suspect. I have no reason to be loitering on this side of town, I have history with the _victim_ and if you check out my history, you'll find I'm a little behind in bills. Any of those is reason enough to be suspicious, but all three?" His accent thickened the longer he spoke. "Aye, I would check me out first."

She rolled her eyes. Perhaps not the nicest thing to do for someone who was facing scrutiny from public enemy number one and thus the entire community as well, but the only reaction she could come up with for his worry. "First of all, you're a cop and you're not stupid enough to hang around the scene of your crime. Second, you know as much as me that jewelry isn't a good way to make money in a robbery, too much of it is inscribed and easy for people to trace back to the suspect. Third, I know _you_."

She hadn't meant the last point to come out with such emotion, but it let her that way nonetheless and she was surprised to find that it was true. Even though she avoided him as she could for weeks, even though she tried not to talk beyond the surface with him, she still knew him. She knew that he liked the water, that he missed it as much from his enjoyment of being on it as the time in his youth when his brother and he lived here, no doubt playing in that very sea. She knew that he paid attention to his surroundings even when he looked distracted. She knew that he was a patient hunter, someone who watched for weaknesses and for his chance to strike.

And, right at that moment, she knew that he was waiting for her. Not for her to finish her thoughts – though no doubt he would do that as well – but he was waiting for her to figure out their status. Fate might have said they were soulmates, but he was letting her lead the way in everything else. She hadn't noticed, not entirely, that he was often by her side, close enough to help her, but far enough away to backup when her emotions cartwheeled to the side of fear.

She found that knowledge made it easier to handle the idea of being soulmates. But her revelation had nothing to do with the current situation though and she stuffed it down, down, down for them to examine later. For her to examine later, she amended. "I know you," she repeated quietly. The switch in tone caught his attention because his earlier ire was replaced with curiosity. "And I know you didn't do this. You're not even under arrest either so don't worry about it, we'll figure it out."

For once, he was the one without words and he nodded mutely, too busy watching her face to notice much else. She wondered if something about it had changed for him or if he was just trying to decipher her strange moods. She couldn't look away when his eyes locked with hers – and she didn't want to either.

"I always knew your eyes were green, but I didn't realize there's some brown in there too," he said quietly, looking from the dimple in her chin to her eyes. She lifted a hand to cheeks, as though she could touch the colors he mentioned and see them too. Her hand dropped, dangling by her side, but it was between one blink and the next that she realized his eyes were blue. Like the sea that was his backdrop right at that moment.

They were beautiful.

Emma sucked in a breath because there was another color returning as well. "Do you always have ginger in your beard?"

They shuffled closer together as though the sea were beneath their feet rather than in the distance. Her heart fluttered hard, trying to beat its way out of her chest.

"Only in the sun, I'm told," he said honestly. His words were only half noticed because she had the stupid urge to kiss him right then and that would have been a mistake. Her revelation was only two minutes and they were in full view of anybody walking down the street, but though both were important reasons for her to stop, she didn't want to crush the urge as she had everything else involving him.

She didn't want to bury what they were or what they could be. For the first time, Emma wanted to accept what fate was holding out to her, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't push for what she couldn't give and that he would wait till she could.

She forced herself to get the words out. "This would be really improper to handle here. At the scene of a crime. A crime in which you are still a suspect. One that I'm supposed to investigate without bias."

"Aye, you're right." It was his acceptance of her reasons that sealed the deal for her.

"…But that's what deputies are for," she finished, latching onto the lapels of his jacket and dragging him close to her. Her lips pressed hard against his, pouring her frustration and fear and acceptance into the clash of their lips, and his hand found its way to her hair, holding her head in place gently, as though she were something precious that he didn't want to break. She held him back tightly, as though he were something that she didn't want to leave.

The kiss softened, less about throwing the months of building emotions at the other and more of accepting the other for what they were.

When Emma opened her eyes a few moments later, the world was rich in color again and she smiled.


End file.
